Sunday, March 6, 2016

Dogs Trained to Detect Citrus Greening

Mira’s nose is so sensitive that she can smell sick citrus trees, and
U.S. orange growers are hoping her super sniffer will help combat one
of the biggest threats ever to their crop.
The government has
trained 10 dogs including Mira -- a 32-month-old German Shepherd-Belgian
Malinois mix -- to identify a bacteria that has been killing citrus
trees for a decade in Florida, the biggest domestic producer. Similar to
canine teams that sniff out bombs, drugs and even bed bugs, this one is
on the hunt for a disease known as citrus greening. There’s no cure, but growers hope the animals will give them more time to find one by slowing the contagion.
Florida’s
orange harvest is forecast to reach a 52-year low this season, down 71
percent since 2004 as tiny bugs called Asian citrus psyllids spread the
bacteria. It cost the citrus industry $7.8 billion
and 7,500 jobs since 2006. Dogs, with 50 times more scent receptors in
their noses than humans, sense chemicals that trees emit when infected.
They’re accurate 99.7 percent of the time -- better than laboratory
tests -- and identify diseased trees before symptoms appear....
Florida is expected to harvest 69 million boxes of oranges this
season, or 56 percent of domestic production, and the state is the top
grower of grapefruit, USDA data show. Each box weighs 90 pounds.
California will supply 52.5 million boxes of oranges, and is the
dominant supplier of tangerines and lemons. Texas ranks second in
grapefruit.
Since 2005,
when the disease was first found in the U.S. in Miami-Dade County, 15
states or territories have been placed under full or partial quarantine
for the presence of the Asian citrus psyllid.
The bugs, which
transmit the bacteria, reproduce rapidly and can fly a mile without
pause, making them especially difficult to contain or kill. Researchers
are still trying to understand how psyllid populations reduced by
pesticides still manage to recover and spread the disease, said Robert
Shatters, research molecular biologist for the USDA Horticultural
Research Laboratory in Fort Pierce, Florida. While the disease exists in
other countries like Brazil, the world’s biggest orange grower, the
flat landscape and close proximity of farms in Florida make it
particularly susceptible to contamination....
Already, about 75 percent of Florida’s groves are infected. The USDA
is planning to dispatch most of the new canine unit to California,
Arizona and Texas, where the disease is less widespread and early
detection could be used more broadly, Dixon said.
“There is such a
grave concern in areas where this disease does not exist that people
want to know if it is there,” said Tim Gottwald, research leader and
plant pathologist at the USDA.

I think we will see crippling diseases in other areas of industrial agriculture going forward. Hopefully, I am wrong.